Make Up For Ever Metal Lab Shines

Make Up For Ever Metal Lab Shines have nine shades. According to a phone call to the Make Up For Ever Boutique in NYC, these will retail for $18 for 0.09 oz. and are currently available. According to Make Up For Ever PR, these aren’t officially launching until Spring 2011. My lovely friend Pursebuzz was so nice as to be my personal shopper at IMATs last week, and she grabbed me one of each of the Lab Shines they had (I think they were missing two or three). This post features five of the nine Metal shades, and part two will follow with the other four.

M0 Onyx is a semi-opaque black with silver sparkle. In the swatch, it’s certainly black and glossy, but it’s not 100% opaque, so on its own, it looks a bit messy. Definitely needs a very dark liner to make it look opaque.

M2 Grey Pearl is a metallic warmed-up pearly silver. It’s very much the color of pearl, with a little silver cast. Kind of like a platinum shade. It’s semi-opaque with a frosty finish. Surely not designed to be an ultra wearable shade, but I could see it working for some more avant garde looks or layered over a darker lipstick.

M4 Tobacco is a soft peachy brown with chamagne beige and gold shimmer. It has the same frosty finish as M2, and it’s semi-opaque as well.

M6 Hazel Brown is a darker brown than M4 but not by much. I had some streaking issues with this one – the color just didn’t want to lay down nicely for me. It has light copper and gold shimmer.

M8 Brown is a plummy brown with multicolored shimmer and a semi-opaque look. This is the most universally wearable of the ones featured in this post!

The Metal Lab Shines use Make Up For Ever’s Metal Powder in the lip gloss (which is where it gets its name). These are supposed to be the most opaque shades out of the 35 in total, with each formula getting progressively sheerer. I found that these were semi-opaque but intensely so. Some shades were nearly opaque, but the majority are semi-opaque, particularly the lighter shades.

The formula itself has this lightly sweetened fruity scent–I want to say melon or grapefruit (why does my nose suck?)–with a non-sticky texture. It’s almost like thicker lip balm on lips–maybe like a thinner Lip Gelee. It has a good amount of slip and slide, but it doesn’t slide right off lips. I don’t get ultra long wear out of these (two to three hours), and they don’t seem to leave much of a stain behind. They have a brush-flecked applicator, so you get plenty of product out for each application, and you have some precision to get a crisp, defined lip look, too.

I like the packaging a lot more than other Make Up For Ever lipglosses–it feels more solid and sophisticated; more suitable for the price tag of Make Up For Ever products. Unfortunately, despite the solid and thick feel of the packaging, they don’t pack much product in those tubes–just 0.09 oz., while the average lip gloss is around 0.17 oz. (Make Up For Ever’s Fascinating lipgloss contains 0.20 oz.). I don’t know if the addition of their Metal, Star, or Diamond powders should merit 50% less at the same cost, you know? Kind of feels like a MAC Dazzleglass situation (though those are worse — more than regular lipglass and 0.06 oz.).

I like the gloss, but I’m not sure I love it. I like that these shades are on the more pigmented side, wear decently (though not long-wearing), and look pretty on. They’re also very moisturizing and comfortable on lips. Not quite weightless, but they’re very jelly-like, so it’s not heavy or clingy.

If you want to know more about how products are evaluated, read out Rating System FAQ!

Product: 27/30

Value: 6/10

Ease of Use: 4/5

Packaging: 4/5

RECOMMENDATION: For semi-opaque, frost-metallic finished lip gloss, you may like the Metal Lab Shines.